Hope Is in the Cities and States

Over the next two years, Washington will be a horror show. The president and a minority of senators will try to minimize the destruction that extreme conservatives will attempt to inflict on our personal freedoms, basic economic security, and the American Dream. As for good (or even rational) proactive legislation, forget it!

But that doesn’t mean we can’t win progressive victories in 2015. We can still dramatically change policy by focusing on states and localities—specifically 18 states that are controlled by Democrats or have split partisan control, about three dozen big cities with blue majorities, and thousands of smaller progressive-controlled cities, towns and counties.

For evidence, just look at the past two years.

● While Congress did nothing good for workers’ wages and benefits, states and cities raised the minimum wage, guaranteed sick leave, and provided collective bargaining rights to many.

● While Congress did nothing for LGBT people, states legalized same-sex marriage and both states and localities enacted laws against housing and workplace discrimination.

● While Congress did nothing for immigrants, states passed DREAM acts and allowed individuals to obtain drivers’ licenses without regard to immigration status while cities directed their police to stop asking about immigration status and stop cooperating with federal immigration detainer requests.

● While Congress did nothing about climate change, states and localities increased the generation of renewable energy—especially solar energy—and encouraged energy efficiency in both buildings and equipment.

● While Congress did nothing about racial profiling and police violence, cities took the lead to fix the problem generally, and specifically, to require cameras on police cars and uniforms.

Next year, progressive elected officials will do so much more. They are the ones who will propose our nation’s most far-reaching, proactive measures. They will turn states, cities and counties into proving grounds for the newest policy ideas. And they will win.

Has someone you know asserted that progressives have run out of ideas? That progressives don’t have a vision for the future? Show them the Progressive Agenda!

It’s divided into 12 policy topics and lays out a vision for each topic, suggesting what a progressive state or locality ought to look like. In the area of taxation, for example, a progressive jurisdiction would adopt legislation to disclose tax expenditures, eliminate unfair tax giveaways to the rich, raise tax rates on wealthy individuals and corporations, and cut taxes on those who can’t afford them.

For each topic, there are highlighted policy models to address the some of our nation’s most timely concerns, like racial profiling, the militarization of police, harassment of immigrants, electronic data privacy, the overuse of standardized tests, fairness to pregnant workers, stopping voter suppression, preventing job piracy, genetically modified foods, unfair debt collection practices, promoting solar energy, reversing the impact of the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision, stopping the war on drug users, raising taxes on the rich, and improving workers’ wages and benefits—to name just a few.

As you surely know, the right wing understands the paramount importance of empowering state and local lawmakers. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has fought over the years for regressive state policies, and too often they have won by getting friends to sponsor and enact their model bills. Earlier this year, ALEC created a new organization, the American City County Exchange (ACCE), to spread their “free market” model laws across the nation at the local level. We cannot let that happen—and we won’t.

Our Progressive Agenda includes hyperlinks so that left-of-center legislators, council members and commissioners have direct access to more than 150 progressive model bills, almost half of which are authored by our staff at the Public Leadership Institute. Working with allies across the nation, the Public Leadership Institute will promote our Agenda to a nationwide network of more than 13,000 progressive state and local lawmakers.

If we allow Donald Trump to radically alter our national culture, to make the unacceptable acceptable, it will be nearly impossible to change it back. Crudeness and bigotry will become mainstream—the new normal.

About Bernie Horn

Bernie Horn is Senior Advisor for the Public Leadership Institute and the Progressive Majority Action Fund. He has worked in politics for more than 25 years as a lawyer, lobbyist, political consultant, policy director, and communications trainer.
Bernie is the author of Framing the Future: How Progressive Values Can Win Elections and Influence People, published in 2008 by Berrett-Koehler, and co-author of Voicing Our Values: A message guide for candidates and lawmakers, published in 2014. He was previously a Senior Fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future, working on domestic policy and message framing. Between 2000 and 2008, Bernie was Senior Director for Policy and Communications at the Center for Policy Alternatives (CPA). Among other things, he wrote CPA’s flagship policy books: eight editions of the Progressive Agenda for the States and two editions of the Progressive Platform for the States. While at CPA, he taught message framing to hundreds of elected officials and candidates.
From 1994 to 2000, Bernie was President of Strategic Campaign Initiatives, Inc., a political consulting firm that helped elect and reelect hundreds of federal, state and local officials. Additionally, he helped win issue campaigns for increased gun control, tobacco taxes and health care, and against casino gambling and restrictions on abortion. Between 1988 and 1994, Bernie directed legislative strategy in all state legislatures for Handgun Control, Inc. (now the Brady Campaign), and served as one of the chief lobbyists for the Brady Bill, drafted and lobbied for the federal ban on semiautomatic assault weapons, and conceived the federal ban on handgun sales to minors. Earlier, he was a campaign manager and issues director for congressional campaigns. Bernie is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University and the Georgetown University Law Center.